This paper reports the early stages of a longitudinal study of one child’s development of language comprehension, focussing on the period 9-14 months.

The nature of the comprehension process is discussed as are the methodological problems involved in investigating this process in pre-speech children.

The analysis of data explores the development of early word meanings, and relational meanings.

It is seen that language comprehension far outstrips production during this period. Although the child can express only a very limited range of meanings, he can understand and respond to a wide range of meanings of increasing complexity, including object and action terms, and relationships between them.

It is suggested that the rapid growth of comprehension during this period grows out of contextualized interactional routines shared between child and caretaker.